Let's me tell you more about these Dreambox's

Let's me tell you more about these Dreambox's

The more esoteric uses of Dreambox cannot be discussed on this forum, and attempting to do so is a quick way of getting your account here cancelled.

However staying strictly within the forum rules I can say this:

Ive got an old 7020 which I use for the free channels from 7 lnb's and with a TNTSat (France) ftv card. Its a fabulous bit of kit - You can stream media across your home lan, or watch 4:2:2 news and sports feeds via vlc.

The linux boxes are infinitely customisable and can be set up more or less how you like.

Using a Dreambox to get cheap Skybox is self evidently illegal and cannot be condonned.

However, a Dreambox has many plusses as a FTA receiver - especially the HD models.

They work best coupled to a steerable satellite dish,. That way you can (legally) watch plenty of HD channels not available via a Sky HD box and, of course, hundreds of SD ones. Many are not in English, of course, but you can customise language in some cases and some have either English language options or subtitles.

It also allows access to FTA channels on UK satellite - even HD ones - that sometimes you cannot watch via Sky whilst under test as Sky boxes do not allow all the tuning options that a Dreambox will.

If you have a legal Sky sub (ie you have paid for it in the UK) I gather there are ways to use the Dreambox to watch the Sky channels as well. Though not sure that you are meant to do even this - owing to card/box pairing. But it would seem unlikely you are going to upset Sky if you are legally paying them a sub.

Would not know how as we have a Openbox for this purpose and use the Dreambox for multi satellite only. But we were, for instance, able to watch ITV HD via the Dreambox from its launch and for a long time until it was made available via a Sky HD box during the year or two it was supposedly Freesat only and had been coded in such a way as to stop Sky HD boxes picking it up.